Sunday, September 20, 2009

Here it is! Aloria's thrilling tale of being at the NYC party for the xkcd book. All your questions are answered....below!

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The xkcd book party. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Alright, maybe not. To be honest, though, I walked into this party expecting to be surrounded by the worst kind of nerd stereotype. Keep in mind that I went to an engineering school with a whopping 19% female population. I've seen the dark, stalkerish side of that world, the cheesy Monty Python references side, the "I'm better than everyone because I understand MATH" side, and the "soap? bah. I am growing anthrax in my armpits" side. Taking into consideration that was a) a party to celebrate the release of an xkcd book b) a party advertised as "Hang out with Randall Munroe!" and c) taking place on "Talk Like a Pirate Day," I had my defenses up.

I left around 6:10 and made my way to the subway. Some dude in the station was playing the Super Mario Bros. theme song on steel drums. I dropped a dollar in his case and thought "OH GOD, IT'S ALREADY BEGUN."

Arriving at and gaining access to the party location was pretty unremarkable. My first stop was the bar, as I knew I would need some serious hooch to get me through the evening and also over that speedbump of social anxiety that seems to plague most every nerd. The party was eerily quiet as people sipped their first drink of the evening. I noticed a disproportionate number of wine drinkers; I had this pegged for a beer crowd but only saw about 4 people with bottles throughout the night. As people became more, erm, socially lubricated (ew!,) conversations started to flow, mostly related to what we all did for a living, what everyone thought of The Watchmen, and our surprise at how inexpensive tickets ended up being. Only a handful of people wore xkcd shirts, nobody showed up with a black hat, and with the exception of a goth girl decked out in petticoat and corset, the party looked more like a career networking event than a celebration of a book release.

Throughout all this, there was no sign of Randall. Surprisingly, nobody really seemed all that interested in meeting him. I spotted him about two hours into the party, as we got closer to what was vaguely referred as the "presentation." He quietly approached the snack table, loaded up on cheese and crackers, and left. He could have been any other person there. He was not mobbed by drooling fans; I doubt if anyone even batted an eye at his presence.

TL;DR FOLKS: THIS IS WHERE THINGS START GETTING GOOD.

The evening ended with the "presentation"-- basically the event organizers telling us about Room to Read, Randall doing a little speech and a Q&A, and finishing with an auction. Readers will be comforted to know that NO, the school will NOT be named after xkcd, though there will be a plaque hung somewhere which mentions it. Randall repeated his opinion that it would be SUPER HILARIOUS to have kids work really hard on learning to read and then having no idea how to pronounce the name of their school. My eyes rolled so hard in my head that my eyelids began to cramp.

Randall's speech was run of the mill-- he'd always wanted to do a book, it was hard to do because he lost a lot of the originals, yadda yadda. He then revealed A GREAT TRUTH. You see, when Randall was a little kid, he liked to go down to the library to take out comic anthologies. Garfield anthologies. Yes, throughout the course of his childhood, Randall made a point to check out and read every Garfield book the library had to offer. There is nothing I can add to that revelation that would make it any more beautiful than it already is.

The Q&A started with some generic "quirky" questions that frankly, I don't remember, and don't feel like going back through my crappy video to transcribe. This is because, about three questions in, someone asked about the xkcdsucks blog.

AND I GOT VIDEO OF IT.

Is there really any more I can say? I mean, I basically had my job done for me. I did get to ask a question, which was "So far to count you have drawn 2 pictures of below the waist and 1 above the waist female genitalia. Do you have any plans to show your female readers some love and draw some male genitalia?"

Randall's response: "I wanted to, but then they kicked me out of TGI Fridays!" Then he stood there, thinking intently, for a few moments. I got video of that, too.

A few more questions were asked, including "who is Megan?" (Randall claims the name is just a female name he picked and not of anyone real,) and then the auction began. The top two bidders each won a one-on-one lunch with Randall, at $375 and $350 each, respectively. I put in a bid somewhere around the $200 mark thinking it would be cute to do an xkcdsucks interview, but was not willing to fork out more than that, even for epic lulz.

The second auction was for a commissioned drawing by Randall, which ended up going for $700. Now, the winner can have Randall draw anything he wants, but the fact that someone was willing to pay that much for work by an artist whose specialty is stick figures... well, I'm sure you guys will have a great time with the snark potential therein.

With all that out of the way, we were left to collect our choice of free tshirts (Mine: "Stand back! I know regular expressions,") prints ("sudo make me a sandwich,") and xkcd books. They ran out of pre-signed books about halfway through, leaving the other 30 or so of us to stand in a line to get Randall to sign our copies. I thought I'd wait, thinking this would be a good opportunity to give him the hilarious book you guys put together. However, after standing there for about a half hour, the line hadn't moved. Randall was still chatting with the event organizers. On top of that, one of the dudes standing in line with me smelled like he hadn't mastered the concept of toilet paper. Luckily, I found a friendly waiter who agreed to take my parcel and deliver it to Randall. Whether it made it to him, was accepted, or was read will remain a mystery. However, I think I got my money's worth.==========================

A thousands thanks to Aloria for doing all this. I think the conclusion to the story with our book (which will be put on the blog in finalized form soon) is rather fitting and nice; Aloria tried to get it to him but we don't even know if it worked. Hopefully those of you who had worried about this operation/ thought we shouldn't do it are ok with how things turned out. Certainly aloria didn't embarrass him, and if thinking about this site ruined his day, it was because of that other guy who asked about us, not Aloria. So I think we are pretty good.

I'm going to accept my blatant hypocrisy and accept how excited I was to read this report and watch the videos. Oh, to be shrugged off!

I can definitely respect Mr. Munroe for regarding us as he does, especially via a "Defending Your Life" analogy (love that movie) and tempered with the acknowledgment that it's dangerous to be around admirers all the time, too.

Aloria, that means you just found the formula to be the next Randall Munroe? I mean, once you find your group of followers, ANY of your jokes will become funny by default. Then it's just a matter of repetition. It's like being a musician: people love you for playing the same song over and over and over. Except if you're Bob Dylan, in which case you're constantly trying to find new ways to confuse your audience.

So I was recently at the last show ever of Harvey Danger, of Flagpole Sitta fame. And they played Flagpole Sitta, and then after the song was over, Sean Nelson, their frontman, said something like, "I think we can all pause to appreciate the fact that we never have to play that song ever again."

Yeah, I think Randy makes the assumption that if we don't think the joke is funny, then we must not have gotten the joke. Which is the same mistake a lot of cuddlefish make when they come and post comments.

So, I watched the videos now. It's.. yeah, pretty much as expected. It's a shame that his self-admitted insecurity and perception that we "just don't get the comic" probably means that he'll never agree to an interview with Carl, because I actually think that would be pretty interesting. He's apparently a likeable enough guy, and he definitely has interesting stuff to say, it's just that we disagree about his comic's decline in quality and humor. Which, frankly, I think would be a pretty interesting thing to hear about. More interesting than "Why are you so awesome?" anyway.

"However, after standing there for about a half hour, the line hadn't moved."

So you basically chickened out. There he was right in front of you, and what did you do? You pulled out and ran away because you got tired or whatever. Good job, the book probably never made it to him.

Keep in mind that I already spent three hours at this party; the bar had closed down at this point and the waitstaff were already tearing down the presentation area. There were about 20 people in front of me, and none of them had gotten to see Randall yet, either.

I'm disappointed that the book didn't get to him, but from Person 1's conversation, I got the impression that he would have took one look at the cover and thrown it away, anyway. He had the opportunity to read our book in PDF form and he declined.

So if not wanting to spend another hour standing around waiting to see someone whose work I dislike is "chickening out," then I'm okay with that.

I read the first part of the book. It's excellent stuff. It's a shame Randall is so uninterested. I'll only be able to read the rest when I get home, but I can tell the material is great.

I'm also sad that, because of a serious fuck up with file formats and PDF conversion, my letter didn't make it in; I explained pretty much the "case study" from my own perspective. Thanks for the case study, by the way -- I'm genuinely, absolutely embarrassed by those first posts.

@Ann Apolis: The IRC channel is good because we can have actual conversations there. The comments section is good for little quips and light debate, but most people don't want to page through a back and forth between two or three people.

Also, the IRC folks got the first account of my party experience while it was fresh in my mind (though I still was a little toasty,) plus other tiny details that I couldn't cram into my writeup. For example, that girl who said she was going to dress up as an xkcd character didn't, and she REALLY wanted to get in Randall's pants.

That conversation between Person #1 and Randall was surprisingly boring. The thing about the vagina comic was enlightening, by the way. He did that one because "his friends laugh". I'd imagine that when your friends know you're the funny comics guy, they'll laugh at anything you show them, because they don't want to hurt your feelings. A better technique for gauging wether or not a comic is funny is SHOWING IT TO YOUR EDITOR.

also, I hate it when people in IRC chatsinsert line breaks for no reason

aloria - I have already asked him something of the sort, lemme find the log

(08:43:07 PM) me: when is that dinner with the girl who wants to get in your pants and spent like 370$ anyway?(08:43:16 PM) randall: I don't know(08:43:18 PM) randall: it's funny(08:43:20 PM) randall: in silicon valley(08:43:24 PM) randall: all the bidders on the dinner were dudes(08:43:30 PM) randall: and all the bidders on the comics were girls(08:43:36 PM) randall: it was the reverse of the new york event

I am not sure why I am suddenly the channel of communication here, though. You could just message him on IRC, he'll respond once he gets back

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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